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it’s not so often that I master a move these days– I haven’t been working at “moves” so much as just re-connecting to my hoop …and to what the spirit moves me to do inside of it, if you will.
But just now while I was leg-hooping (doing spunk, in the HoopGirl vocabulary, for all you lovely Readers and Owners and Buyers of the Book) I dropped my hoop onto the floor and managed to give it a kick with one foot and then knocked it higher with the other and got it going around my hips again, without it ever coming to a stop (whatever that’s called, a live kick start?)– which is a freaking FIRST for me, ladies and gentlemen. And I had one of those luscious experiences of mastery-satisfaction that are far and few between. (You know whereof I speak? You want to share your last luscious mastery moment?)
Just one more thing to celebrate, really.
the 100 strangers shot (the "mermaid"!)
photo by Philo Hagen
There was a time when I wanted to write a book about the culture of hooping. My initial proposal (before it was, upon the advice of my agent, merged with HoopGirl’s book idea) covered influences and convergences–places where various forms of dance, movement, and music touch on hooping (e.g. bellydance, object manipulation, acrobatics, yoga, hip hop…) It also covered some key personalities: the innovators who have made a distinct mark on the art. I’m not going to name names, but you probably could guess them.
In any case, that wasn’t the book my agent thought would sell, and she was undoubtedly right. We hoopers are still a pretty tiny subculture. My agent said that would be a good 3rd or fifth book on the market on the topic, assuming the movement was catching on, but not a good first book, which needed to be something more akin to a hooping bible, laying the groundwork.
If in the future I do return to the original idea, though, I just spent a week gathering some good fodder for it, at the Spin Cycle Camp at Burning Man. The camp was designed and organized by Rich “Isopop” Porter and his wife Lauren, and built with capable crewmates Grant-Kenny-Ryan–for whom there can’t be enough gratitude. Our shadestars, their coverage drifting slowly with the sun’s progress (and the center post functioning as a sundial to boot!) were perfect, and were the envy of everyone who checked out our camp.
Most of the biggest names in hooping lived at Spin Cycle, and the few who didn’t dropped by a few times and came to our massive jam on Thursday evening. No classes were offered, and there seemed to be a sort of collective sigh of relief at not carrying that particular responsibility, which is always a part of every other kind of hooping gathering/conference/convergence that happens. We were really just there to build community.
Some folks did have performances to do–you’d see them rehearsing with earphones on, or getting themselves done up in their fineries–flowers, leaves, feathers, metallics, whites…–but for the most part there was just a lot of chilling and laughing and hooping, punctuated by hibiscus with agave plus or minus tequila (thanks to S), pickled eggs (thanks to K), unaccountably healthful, freshly-prepared food from the kitchen of (another) K, and non-dairy ice cream and truffles (thanks to R, who secured her place in heaven by bringing such gifts).
The quality of hooping around camp was just over-the-top ridiculous–but I’d have to say I had most fun watching G, whom I’d never seen hoop before, and who really embodies grace despite gender and stature, and M, whose intimacy and imagination with the hoop melts me into a puddle of Desire. I had my own best hoop moment on the full moon Friday night, after we came back from the wedding (there was not just one wedding that went down, but two, among the campmates), when the Light One (L) and the Healer (R) and I took the unwatched stage with our hoops. Weird magic was afoot all that night, and channeled right into our dance.
photo by Philo Hagen
In the hushed undercurrents of the Spin Cycle, there were some old divisions and wounds, some of which found healing; and there were some romances, some of which came to fruition. There was some jealousy, as certain ascendant stars outshone other equally-talented folks. There were moments when I was reminded of the dynamics of high school: the cool kids, the jocks, the hippies, with me and Philo (editor of hooping.org) feeling kind of like the yearbook and newspaper staff, existing both inside the system, and observing it from the outside.
Overall, though, I couldn’t help but keep asking, as I did of A one morning at Center Camp, what makes hoopers such divinely wonderful people? Is it that hooping draws already-amazing people to it? Or is it that the hoop has a transformational effect on everyone who truly invests in it? A little of both, we decided…and there’s always more research to be done.
practicing several of the moves Brecken taught 8/24-25/09: swinging the hoop into an isolation behind you with the 180 body turn (2x, bookending the clip at beginning & end); the finger “flair” on the isolations (which I seem to need to stick my tongue out for); “bouncing” the hoop while isolating.
For days now I’ve been mulling over what to say about Brecken’s 2-day workshop that took place in SF this past Monday & Tuesday. Last night I was telling a non-hooping friend about how indescribable it was, and in doing so I came up with the best term yet: “liminal.”
Here’s what wiki has by way of a definition:
Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”) is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical state of being on the “threshold” of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology (a “liminal state”) and in anthropological theories, a ritual, especially a rite of passage, involves some change to the participants, especially their social status.
The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed – a situation which can lead to new perspectives.
Really, the word does a pretty outstanding job of describing both Brecken‘s style AND my experience of the workshop.
Brecken has a totally unique thing going on with her hoop: on the threshold between wobbly/sloppy/ drunken on the one hand, and precise/controlled/quick on the other. And surfing between planes nearly continuously. She stays relatively grounded, maybe bouncing a little on the balls of her feet, and then executes these crazy sideways/diagonal leaps where her body arcs through the air and mimics the curve of the hoop. (My core was *so* sore after Day One from twisting around in efforts to mimic that.) I should add “genderbending” to the title here too: her dance is simultaneously “masculine” (with strong pops reminiscent of Kahunahula & Rich) and incredibly “feminine,” the way she arches her spine or lets her hands waft through the air while doing angled rolls. She moves with total confidence once she’s connected with her hoop, yet she’s all shy and self-deprecating outside it, the most humble top-hooper, hands down.
And the workshop, being her second ever, felt like a birth of a new creature. Her explanations of her hooping motivations, inspirations, experiences took us down long windy undertravelled paths, wild green tendrils and jungle sometimes obscuring the way, until we’d arrive at some mountainside spring-fed pool of clarity. Sometimes I lost the thread entirely, but sometimes I made it there, to that remote gem.
Yeah, it felt like a rite of passage, for sure. I felt incredibly lucky to be there, surrounded by so much hooping talent, and learning from this capricious creature. Here she is (I watched this soundtrackless wonder, which really takes *off* around 2:30, with Cheb i Sabbah’s Jai Bhavani) :
Yesterday a postcard arrived in the mail, blaring amplified orange sunsets and artificially blue water and skies and the word Miedzyzdroje, which turns out to be the name of a Polish resort town on the Baltic. The card was from my mother, who apparently went on a golfing retreat there. Another golfing trip! This is the third or fourth she’s done in the last year or so, by my count.
So. I had a hard time adjusting to her new pastime at first (smacking of class privilege as it does, not to mention the herbicides, pesticides, dyes, fertilizers and other pollutants, and excessive water use…). However, at some point this Debbie Downer over here decided to squash my judgment and embrace it. My mum seems continuously happier than she’s been for at least 15 years, what with all that fresh air and walking and perfecting of her craft. Last time she called me the first words out of her mouth were: “I’m down to 18!,” meaning her handicap (and for the record, I can’t remember the exact number she told me, because these numbers have zero significance to me. But I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in the upper teens.)
The funny thing is, she went through a similar evolution in her feelings about my hooping, at first dismayed by general “suggestiveness” of the dance, and close to disgusted by the outfits she saw me and the Allstars wearing, and then gradually realizing it was keeping me in better shape, and happier, than I’ve been at any other time in my life. (That includes the period when I was actually skinnier and more toned, during the couple of years when I worked out 5 days a week at the gym, mostly on stairmasters and ellipticals, fueled by my desire to keep my ex-husband’s wandering eyes on me… an era that my mother called “too thin and gaunt,” and during which I was certainly not very happy.)
The other aspect of all this that amuses me is that we are not a sporty family. Or a family that cultivated any kind of physical skills (unless you count knitting, sewing, cooking, gardening as physical, and all but the last would be quite a stretch in my book).
My father as I knew him was an intellectual, not a sportsm/fan (although yes, he was a jitterbugger in his first few decades). He did not watch sports (ever), we did not play catch together (ever), and we shared an indulgently-smiling tolerance of the annual father/daughter “field day,” an all-school (grades K-12) celebration of sportiness that made clear this stuff was not our forte. (Although I think once I won a ribbon for the 3-legged race, coming in second place—the three-legged race, being less about physical prowess, and more about partnership and communication, was one of the few events at which I stood any chance at all.) Give us a read-a-thon any day.
And while my classmates’ mothers were having tennis dates, squash dates, sometimes even golf dates, in the way that privileged women do, my mother was ashamed of never having learned how to do any of those things, having grown up in a pretty frugal postwar Germany, and never joined them in any of it. (Although she tried hard to get her daughter to embrace those kinds of upper-ish class trappings, sending me to ballet and tennis classes, both of which I totally disliked and bailed on. She tried so hard to persuade me to take horseback riding lessons, which most girls would have been stoked about!, but not me. Looking back I’m still not clear why I had such an aversion to all those pastimes. An unaccountably pinko child, I was. Ok, am.)
So I head off to my hooping gatherings and retreats, while mi madre goes to her golfing things, and so we nurture our happy, luscious bodies. Who woulda thunk it?
At the beginning of July I went on an 8-day writing retreat to finish the current book project (or come close to finishing it). I brought my regular hoop (32” diameter, 100 psi, 1” tube diameter) just so I could take some hooping breaks to clear my head. I knew there’d be other folks at the property but I figured I wouldn’t be giving lessons, so I didn’t bring a beginner’s hoop. Duh. Of course I wound up giving lessons, to at least 6 adults and 6 kids. And the adults struggled more than they should have, using mine, while I demonstrated using a kid-size hoop that I found up there.
These people were so warm and generous, and enthusiastic about hooping (despite the frustration of learning with a smallish, lightish one) that I resolved to make a bunch of hoops to gift to their community.
It’s been a long time since I made hoops, so I spent a day snuffling around on hooping.org, reading the discussion threads in the hoopmaking section and re-reading the tutorial by Jason, aka the Father of Hoopmaking.
Logistics: I am a city mouse who lives a car-free existence. I do have a membership with the car-sharing service Zipcar, so it occurred to me to rent a car to pick up supplies. But by the time I figured in the likely minimum of $40 I’d spend on the Zipcar, plus the possible frustration of running to Loewe’s or Home Depot only to find they didn’t have what I needed, I decided I would just order materials online and have them delivered to my doorstep in downtown Oakland. Fellow City Mice, and Country Mice: I can heartily recommend this option. (Tip: Bulk up orders by combining your order with friends’, in order to get the lowest carbon footprint.)
Someone had posted a couple helpful links for online tubing on hooping.org. I ended up going with the 100’ coil of 1” diameter, 125 PSI tubing from Ideal True Value hardware. It cost $34.99 plus shipping, which was about ten bucks on top of that. This would turn out to be enough for 10 beginner hoops, in varying diameters at about an average of 37″.
(A note for newbies: the PSI refers to the thickness of the wall of the tube. That’s important for the water pressure for which this irrigation/plumbing tubing is actually intended. The higher the PSI number, the heavier the hoop will be. 100 is a little light for the ideal beginner’s hoop, in my mind, although you can just use an extra layer of tape later to add weight. 160psi is very solid. But 125 is right in the middle, and seemed perfect.)
I got the ¾” insert connectors online as well. They cost $0.59 each, and I ordered seven, thinking I’d only have enough tubing for 6 or 7 hoops (oops). With shipping they came to just over eight bucks.
Then, for the most whimsical part of the material acquisitions, I took a virtual trip to identi-tape.com. The motherlode of hoop tapes. They have actually responded to the hoop community’s patronage by featuring all hoop-appropriate tapes in a list of links, AND they’ve adapted the length of the rolls to easier finish multiple hoops (which, of course, depends on how much tape you use per hoop…but there is nothing more frustrating than running out of tape before finishing a hoop.)
I still had a nice selection of vinyl tape and gaffers (the fabric tape that allows the hoop to “stick” to your body better) leftover from my last hoopmaking orgy several years back. But since then I’ve become more aware of toxic chemicals and materials and Stuff. That vinyl tape in all the shiny colors that we all love so much? Uh-oh. Vinyl means PVC.
And here’s what PVC means:
During PVC’s multi-stage production, chlorine gas is used to produce ethylene dichloride (EDC), which is converted into vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), which is converted into the PVC. This is a horrifically poisonous list of ingredients: Chlorine gas is so toxic that it has been used in war; EDC is extremely hazardous; and VCM is a known human carcinogen that causes a rare form of liver cancer and also damages the central nervous system. Many studies have documented high rates of diseases among workers in vinyl chloride production facilities, including liver cancer, brain cancer, lung cancer, lymphomas, leukemia, and liver cirrhosis.
PVC’s production process also releases a lot of toxic pollution into the environment, including dioxins. Dioxins are a group of noxious toxic chemicals that persist in the environment, travel great distances, build up in the food chain, and then cause cancer, as well as harm to the immune and reproductive systems.
Additionally, because its pure form PVC is actually a brittle plastic with limited use, further chemicals, or additives, needed to be mixed in to make it pliable and expand its uses. These include neurotoxic heavy metals like mercury and lead, and synthetic chemicals, like phthalates, which are known to cause reproductive disorders and suspected to cause cancer. Since most of these additives don’t actually bond to the PVC at the molecular level, they slowly leak out, a process called leaching or off-gassing, into our environment and our bodies.
Sorry to be all Debbie Downer on your ass. But isn’t it better to be an informed consumer?
So this time before ordering anything I checked out identi-tape’s page of information on their RoHS compliant tapes. RoHS means Restriction of Hazardous Substances, like lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, and VOC solvents. After reading all about it, I wound up ordering a couple rolls of fabric/ gaffers tapes, 2 rolls of glitter tape. The only vinyl-like tape I ordered was two rolls of the RoHS-compliant harness tape, which also meets the even-stricter child-focused CPSIA standards. It’s not perfect but it’s a sight better, and the more we express our preference for safer tapes, the more they will make and offer safer tapes. 
The final thing I needed was a ratcheting pipecutter. I know enough hoopers and hoopmakers that I figured I could borrow one from friends, which I did (thanks Rich!). You can also use a handsaw or some tough garden shears, but I recommend getting a proper cutter for safe, even, clean cuts.
Now I just needed to sit back and wait for the stuff to arrive at my door.
About a week after I placed my orders, the stuff started arriving. First the connectors, then the tapes, and finally, delivered literally right to my door on the sixth-floor of my building by the nice Fed-Ex man, the tubing (image #1). Within ten days, I had everything I needed.
I took the ratcheting cutter in hand and started cutting the lengths for the hoops. (Image #2) I made some closer to 40” in diameter, and some closer to 36”, and one that was 34” just for variety. The most important thing about cutting the tubing is getting a straight, flat cut—precisely perpendicular—so that the two ends fit together without a gap. (If your cut is at all slanty, the two ends won’t sit flat against each other, which means you’ll have a gap in the surface of the hoop.)
While doing my cuts, I heated a pot of water on the stove. When it was steaming, I dipped one end of a cut length in the water (image #3) for about 20 seconds to soften the tube so it would accept the insert connector. A sigh of relief as the connector fit perfectly inside (with some light persuasion from a hammer- image #4). Because I’d ordered everything online from separate vendors, I’d been worried the parts might not match.
I stuck the other end of the tubing in the hot water, and brought it down over the exposed end of the connector. See how my knuckles and fingers are white with the exertion (image #5) of pushing the ends together? You want as little of a gap at the connection point as possible so you have to put some muscle into it. But be careful! The plastic tubing retains its heat for a while. Don’t let your kids do this part, and if you’re heat sensitive maybe wear some grippy garden gloves.
Finally, I took some vinyl tape and went around the seam a couple times. (image #6) Voila! A naked hoop, ready for taping.
I was about to say—and now for everyone’s favorite part. But I’ve actually met a fair number of folks who say they hate the taping part because it’s so futzy. I guess it depends a little on how much of a perfectionist you are.
There are several nice discussion threads and tutorials on hooptaping.
So. For my first hoop, I decided to use up some of the white 1” gaffers I had on hand for a first layer (images #7 +8). I don’t really like this tape so much: I prefer narrower widths (ie, ¾” rather than 1”), because the narrower the tape, the more control I seem to have over it while wrapping, and the less likely I am to get wrinkles. I tend to stand while taping, keeping the vertical hoop steady with a foot or between my legs, so I have both hands free. I pass the roll of tape back and forth between my hands, hugging the tape to the angle of the hoop, and feeling along the bit I’ve just put on to keep it smooth and wrinkle-free.
I decided to do a second layer with the same white tape since the uncovered space (naked black tubing) was too wide to be covered with ¾” tape. (Image #9). It came out a long way from perfect—see image #10 for the closer-up shot showing all the gaps and wrinkles! (It looks better from afar, image #11.) Thus, I’d advise you to not use your favorite tape on your first hoop. Every subsequent tape job gets smoother, in my experience, as you get a feel for how to pull and maneuver the tape into place.
I took a ¼” purple vinyl tape to cover up the remaining bits of black (images # 12 + 13). This stuff goes on super fast and easy—very gratifying. And so my first homemade hoop was completed.
The next one I made used a 1” orange “camouflage” fabric/gaffers tape as the base layer, with a ¾” orange vinyl tape as the top layer. The camo tape was wonderful to work with—very forgiving. I liked the way the “tiger” hoop turned out so much, I made an extra one for me to keep!
Then I did some in blue/black/grey color schemes with 3 layers of tape each, criss-crossing the 2nd and 3rd layers.
Finally, I felt brave enough to deal with some glitter tape (pink) which I combined with ¾” pink harness tape and ½” grey gaffers. Basically: if you’re using a fancy reflective tape (mirrored, prismatic, glitter, etc), you want to put it on first. These tapes have very little give or stretch to them, so you can’t pull them into position the way you can the fabric (gaffers) or vinyl-type tapes—not to mention they have a backing that you have pull off as you’re unrolling the tape. They are more likely to get little bubbles and wrinkles in them as you’re laying them down. (Wrinkles are not only unsightly, more importantly they can actually hurt your skin, especially your hands, as the hoop rolls over you.) These tapes also become brittle at the edges as time passes, and are likely to flake off/lift off the hoop. So you put them down first and cover their edges with a layer of either gaffers or vinyl.
Do try this at home.
